Tag Archives: topography

Layers of the City: Pittsburgh Edition

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I clench my teeth every time the “T”, Pittsburgh’s light rail system, slowly makes the first 90 degree bend leaving Gateway Station, squeaking like fingernails on a chalkboard.  After traveling a few hundred yards, it turns back 90 degrees–squeak, scratch, squeak–before pulling into the Wood Street Station.  As everyone knows that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, I struggled to understand why the T was built with turns so sharp it is impossible for the trains not to screech, until my friend pointed out that there might be building foundations or basements that the underground tracks need to maneuver around.

Like many metropolises, the density of downtown Pittsburgh creates various physical layers of activity.  Yet compared to other some other cities (see future post Layers of the City: Chicago Edition), Pittsburgh’s layers can be hard to notice.  The T is perhaps the most obvious example.  For most of it’s length through the southern neighborhoods and suburbs, the T travels at grade.  Once it crosses the Monongahela River into Downtown, it becomes an elevated train for a few blocks before submerging underground until it passes under the Allegheny River to the North Shore, where it reemerges to end as an elevated train.

Underground Life

If you get off the T at Gateway Station and walk down a block to the start of 5th Ave, which actually feels like an alley, you might notice that the Highmark Building is built over an underground garage.  I assume that this garage has multiple levels below grade and is at least part of the reason for the T’s sharp turns.

The new PNC Tower also has a garage below grade.  Yet the most recent new construction project downtown, on the former site of Sax Fifth Avenue, places the garage between the first floor retail and proposed upper level residences.

The building I work in, the former Jones & Laughlin Steel Mill Headquarters, has at least 3 1/2 levels of basement.  The building is long past its days of glory with peeling paint, cracked foundation, and elevators that you may never make it out of again.  The mezzanine level of the basement is a maze of building supplies, file cabinets, discarded furniture and boxes upon boxes of documents.  It is damp and dusty.  Five minutes down there could lead to a severe allergy attack.  Yet the stairs keep going down and down, plunging further into the dark depths.  I’ve heard rumors of more documents being stored in the lower levels.

Street Level

Coming back above ground, most activity in downtown Pittsburgh takes place at street level.  Pedestrians, bicyclists, buses, cars, delivery trucks, dumpsters, and more compete for space on the narrow streets and sidewalks.  Most shopping and restaurants are located at street level.  The Highmark Building and the Oxford Building still have some retail above the first floor.

Pie in the Sky

As you walk around downtown, if you look up, you might catch a rare sight of pedestrian sky bridges.  The most famous of which is the Bridge of Sighs connecting the Allegheny County Courthouse with the former Jail.  The second most famous (speaking with pure bias) is the bridge connecting the parking garage with what used to be the shoe section of the former Kaufmann’s Department Store (always a necessary stop when shopping for back to school).  A handful of others are sprinkled throughout downtown.  Indianapolis has got us beat though.  That city has a network of pedestrian connections that enables you to walk for miles between the stadiums, office buildings, and other structures downtown without ever getting a taste of fresh air.

Higher up, there is a sprinkling of rooftop or penthouse restaurants.  This is one of our complaints at work: while many new, good restaurants have opened downtown in recent years, there is still a dearth of restaurants and bars with views.  Sienna Mercado’s Il Tetto, Harris Grill, and the Biergarten at Hotel Monaco all have rooftop decks, but they are surrounded by taller buildings limiting views.  Ollie’s Gastropub on the top floor of the Oliver Building has some good views, but no fresh air.

There isn’t much connection or relationship between the different parts of these layers in Pittsburgh.  It is like they are experiments, like the city is only dabbling.  As if to say, it can’t make up its mind whether or not to let the public leave street level and participate in or explore all levels of the city.

 

Pittsburgh’s Bragging Rights

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I mentioned previously that I totally geek out over maps.  I recently came across a fascinating “new” map called The “Z” Atlas & Map of Pittsburgh, PA, and Mount Oliver, PA.  I am adding it to the Sanborn Maps and GM Hopkins Maps as a go-to for studying the changes Pittsburgh went through in the 20th Century.  The “Z” Atlas was published in 1952.  There are two things about this map that caught my eye as setting it apart from others during my initial perusal.

First, in the street index, it identifies which streets have unusual addressing.  Pittsburgh is known for some unique addressing situations.  For example, there is a block where houses built before WWII have 1300 numbers and the ones built after WWII have 1400 numbers, even though they are intermixed.  This atlas shows that the post WWII houses were built after 1952 because the address numbers on that street weren’t wonky yet.

Second, this map claims that “Pittsburgh has more streets than any City in the World. You will find EVERY ONE of them in this ‘Z’ Atlas and Map!”

“Preposterous,” I said, when I first read that claim.  Pittsburgh’s land area is small compared to other large metropoles.  It does not make Wikipedia’s current list of the 150 largest US cities by land area.  Without digging into census data, I assume that many of the old cities (ex. New York City, Chicago, Cleveland), if not most of the 150 listed, likely were of a similar size in the 1950s as today.  How could it be possible for Pittsburgh to have more streets than these cities that are significantly larger?

Then it hit me.  It is possible by the same token that makes it possible for Pittsburgh to have more bridges than any other city in the world, more steps than any other city, and the steepest paved street in the world: topography.

Pittsburgh’s many hills, ravines, cliffs, and rivers mean there are few long streets and many short streets.  Maybe after all, Pittsburgh did have more streets than any other City in the World in 1952.  Reading more of the “Z” Atlas, it elsewhere explains that Pittsburgh had over 6,000 streets at the time of the map’s publication.  That number does include the numerous “paper” streets that were surveyed and mapped, “but never built or even marked in the dirt.”

Many of these paper streets still exist today causing headaches for the City and its citizens, but some have been vacated and turned over to private ownership.  Between that and the rise of mega-cities since the 1950s, I won’t say that Pittsburgh can still claim more streets than any other city.  A quick Google search showed that the question of what city has the most number of streets is not as well discussed as what city has the most bridges.  Perhaps a more ambitious person than myself could run an analysis to see whether Pittsburgh still has more streets than any other City in the World.  (Don’t forget to count the step streets!)